Pokemon Go Guide for Absolute Beginners

It doesn’t matter if you are a Pokémon fan or not. You need to try Pokémon Go- the latest trend in the mobile industry. If you are following the news you already know how popular Pokémon Go has become in the last month or so.

Millions of players are playing Pokémon Go daily and it has already beaten the likes of Twitter and Tinder in terms of daily active users and number of app installations respectively. It has also gone past the average time spent in an app beating the likes of WhatsApp.

Its popularity has already been answered around the web, but that’s not the point of the article. The point of the article is to guide you through the amazing world of Pokémon Go.

This guide is aimed at the beginner who is about to play Pokémon Go for the first time. A beginner will have many questions including what is Pokémon? Not everyone is familiar with Pokémon and how it works, and that’s why we take a dig at the topic.

If you are a developer and wondering about Pokémon Go’s development, check out live development videos about Pokémon Go Trading Marketplace development here.

So without any further waiting, let’s get started with Pokémon Go Guide for Absolute Beginners.

Pokémon and Pokémon Go? What is it all about?

Pokémon Go is an augmented reality (AR) game developed by Niantic. Niantic has been in the business of making AR games for the past three years. They developed Ingress, a similar game to Pokémon, but one that is inherently complex in nature. Pokémon Go has been installed in more than 5% of the Android devices and is going strong. In the game, you need to catch Pokémon using balls known as Pokéballs. There are other game mechanics including gym battles, PokéStops, etc., which we will cover in the rest of the guide.

Advertising

Before we move further, let’s understand augmented reality. Augmented reality is all about using your surroundings to enhance the game experience. In more technical terms it superimposes computer-generated video, audio, or image to the real world and makes your experience in a completely different way.

The Pokémon brand has been there for the past 20 years. It has made millions of fans until now, and the brand name has helped Pokémon Go reach millions of players already!

From the Wikipedia article, “Pokémon is a media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, a Japanese consortium between Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. While the franchise copyright is shared by all three companies, Nintendo is the sole owner of the trademark. The franchise was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1995, and is centered on fictional creatures called “Pokémon”, which humans, known as Pokémon Trainers, catch and train to battle each other for sport.”

In Pokémon Go, you become the Pokémontrainer and try to capture all the available Pokémon.

Getting Started

If you are new and don’t know where to start.,the first thing you need to know about Pokémon Go is that it is not released worldwide, but is seeing incremental release cycles around the world. To find out if it has already been released in your country just go to this link. If you see a green sign(i.e. released), you can proceed to your mobile OS app store, iPhone or Android and download it from there. Oh yes, it is free, and you don’t have to pay to download the app.

Once installed, you can proceed to the game and start playing.

Note: App not available in your country? You can either wait for the release or go to 3rd party websites to download the .apk(for Android) or .ipa(for iOS) and install it on your device. Niantic, for now, is not doing any regional checks, which means that the app will work without any limitation.

Caution: Downloading .apk or IPA file from 3rd party websites can lead to problems. Please check thoroughly before downloading as there are reports of the installation files being infected. If you are worried about security, then it is better to wait for the official release.

Advertising

Creating Avatar and GPS

When you start up the app for the first time, it will ask you to create your avatar. Avatar creation is straightforward as you need to select the sex, the hair color, and other avatar attributes. Once done, you can now proceed to the main game screen!

The game will showcase a map. If you are not able to see the map instantly, wait for a few seconds before it gets updated with all the information. If the map is not loaded with your avatar, double-check whether or not your smartphone GPS is working. Try to switch it off and on and that should do the trick.

Getting Your First Pokémon

If everything worked fine until now, you would be able to see three Pokémon on your screen. The three Pokémon are Squirtle, Charmander, and Bulbasaur. Choosing one of them will start your journey. Before you choose one, it is a good idea to understand the types of Pokémon.

Read Next

Currently, there are many types of Pokémon in the game. They are water, grass, steel, ghost, bug, rock, poison, flying, fighting, normal, ground, psychic, dark, fairy, dragon, and ice. Among all the types, the three available Pokémon are water (Squirtle), Fire (Charmander), and poison/grass (Bulbasaur).

Wait, you can still get a Pikachu, an electric-type Pokémon as your first Pokémon. All you need to do is walk away from the initial place then come back to the same location. On third or fourth try, you will be able to see Pikachu on your map. Go catch it!

Capturing Pokémon With Pokéballs

The core mechanics of the game revolve around capturing Pokémon. You can catch them using the in-game element, Pokéball. When a Pokémon alert arrives on your mobile, you need to walk the avatar to the location and point your phone camera at the location. The Pokémon should appear jumping wildly. Point your Pokéball to the circle surrounding the Pokémon and throw the ball with the right curve. If you did everything right, you would be able to capture the Pokémon.

Note 1: Higher-level Pokémon have higher chances of fleeing the scene. Don’t get disappointed and try capturing it again! It is just part of the game!

Note 2: To make sure you don’t miss any nearby Pokémon in the future, turn vibration on. By turning the vibration on, you will be able to do other tasks and still not miss a single Pokémon!

Advertising

Improve your chances

You can improve your chances of capturing a Pokémon by using in-game items such as Lure Modules and Razz Berry. Razz Berry improves your chances of catching a particular Pokémon. Lure module, on the other hand, attracts Pokémon toward a PokéStop.

Tip: Turn off your phone camera if you don’t want to get distracted by the background and save battery at the same time.

Leveling Up

Leveling up is all about progressing in the game. You need to do different activities within the game such as capturing a Pokémon, winning Gym matches, evolve Pokémon, etc. Each level has its own rewards, and you can check the full list here. As you gradually progress through the game, you will unlock different items and other key aspects of the game. For example, when you hit level 5, you will unlock Gym battles where you can battle other Pokémon. Potions and Revives are also unlocked at level 5.

You can gain experience points (XP) in the following ways:

Capture Pokémon

Evolve Pokémon

Hatch Pokémon eggs

Doing Gym battles

Get free items at PokéStop.

Progressing through the game from level 1 to 20 is easy and less time consuming. But, after you hit level 20, leveling up becomes harder due to high XP requirements. The steep curve has already been seen as a drawback to the game progression system, and many players have already started leaving the game at high levels.

Evolving Pokémon

Another cool part of the game is evolving Pokémon. You make your Pokémon more powerful by using candies on them. The power of a Pokémon is gauged by Combat Points (CP) points. The higher the CP points, the better the Pokémon.

To get started, you need to capture as many Pokémon as you want. But don’t just evolve them yet! The idea here is to save your candies for the higher level CPs that you will later capture. To get candies, you need to capture tons of Pokémon and exchange the low CP ones with Professor Willow for candy.

Advertising

PokéStops

Want to receive free items and capture Pokémon? Then, you need to go to PokéStops. PokéStop is a marked place on the map where you can get free items and also increase chances of capturing Pokémon by using Lure modules. To get free items, you need to walk to the landmark and swipe left to right. Once done, free items will flow. You now need to tap on them to take them! If you are feeling lucky and want to capture Pokémon, you can use Lure Module to increase the Pokémon’s activity in that zone. Other players can also take the advantage of the Lure Module and capture Pokémon!

Gym Battles

Even though the game revolves around capturing and evolving Pokémon, you can still battle Pokémon in Gyms. Gyms are special places where you can fight other players’ Pokémon and engage in healthy competition. Also, it should be noted that Gyms are colored according to red, blue or yellow. The color signifies different teams in Pokémon Go. Grey color means the Gym is empty, and you can capture it. Once captured, you can defend the Gym against other players from different teams.

Fighting another Pokémon is rewarding even though most of the combat is automatic in nature. To ensure that you have better chances, use higher CP Pokémon. During the battle, your Pokémon will lose health, and you need to use in-game items to replenish its health.

That’s all for now. Pokémon Go is great for casual players who want to engage in social interactivity, exploration, and also want to feel nostalgic.

7 Tools to Help Keep Track of Goals and Habits Effectively

Now that 2011 is well underway and most people have fallen off the bandwagon when it comes to their New Year’s resolutions (myself included), it’s a good time to step back and take an honest look at our habits and the goals that we want to achieve.

Something that I have learned over the past few years is that if you track something, be it your eating habits, exercise, writing time, work time, etc. you become aware of the reality of the situation. This is why most diet gurus tell you to track what you eat for a week so you have an awareness of the of how you really eat before you start your diet and exercise regimen.

Tracking daily habits and progress towards goals is another way to see reality and create a way for you clearly review what you have accomplished over a set period of time. Tracking helps motivate you too; if I can make a change in my life and do it once a day for a period of time it makes me more apt to keep doing it.

So, if you have some goals and habits in mind that need tracked, all you need is a tracking tool. Today we’ll look at 7 different tools to help you keep track of your habits and goals.

Joe’s Goals

Advertising

Joe’s Goals is a web-based tool that allows users to track their habits and goals in an easy to use interface. Users can add as many goals/habits as they want and also check multiple times per day for those “extra productive days”. Something that is unique about Joe’s Goals is the way that you can keep track of negative habits such as eating out, smoking, etc. This can help you visualize the good things that you are doing as well as the negative things that you are doing in your life.

Joe’s Goals is free with a subscription version giving you no ads and the “latest version” for $12 a year.

Daytum

is an in depth way of counting things that you do during the day and then presenting them to you in many different reports and groups. With Daytum you can add several different items to different custom categories such as work, school, home, etc. to keep track of your habits in each focus area of your life.

Advertising

Daytum is extremely in depth and there are a ton of settings for users to tweak. There is a free version that is pretty standard, but if you want more features and unlimited items and categories you’ll need Daytum Plus which is $4 a month.

Excel or Numbers

If you are the spreadsheet number cruncher type and the thought of using someone else’s idea of how you should track your habits turns you off, then creating your own Excel/Numbers/Google spreadsheet is the way to go. Not only do you have pretty much limitless ways to view, enter, and manipulate your goal and habit data, but you have complete control over your stuff and can make it private.

Read Next

What’s nice about spreadsheets is you can create reports and can customize your views in any way you see fit. Also, by using Dropbox, you can keep your tracker sheets anywhere you have a connection.

Evernote

Advertising

I must admit, I am an Evernote junky, mostly because this tool is so ubiquitous. There are several ways you can implement habit/goal tracking with Evernote. You won’t be able to get nifty reports and graphs and such, but you will be able to access your goal tracking anywhere your are, be it iPhone, Android, Mac, PC, or web. With Evernote you pretty much have no excuse for not entering your daily habit and goal information as it is available anywhere.

Evernote is free with a premium version available.

Access or Bento

If you like the idea of creating your own tracker via Excel or Numbers, you may be compelled to get even more creative with database tools like Access for Windows or Bento for Mac. These tools allow you to set up relational databases and even give you the option of setting up custom interfaces to interact with your data. Access is pretty powerful for personal database applications, and using it with other MS products, you can come up with some pretty awesome, in depth analysis and tracking of your habits and goals.

Bento is extremely powerful and user friendly. Also with Bento you can get the iPhone and iPad app to keep your data anywhere you go.

Advertising

You can check out Access and the Office Suite here and Bento here.

Analog Bonus: Pen and Paper

All these digital tools are pretty nifty and have all sorts of bells and whistles, but there are some people out there that still swear by a notebook and pen. Just like using spreadsheets or personal databases, pen and paper gives you ultimate freedom and control when it comes to your set up. It also doesn’t lock you into anyone else’s idea of just how you should track your habits.

Conclusion

I can’t necessarily recommend which tool is the best for tracking your personal habits and goals, as all of them have their quirks. What I can do however (yes, it’s a bit of a cop-out) is tell you that the tool to use is whatever works best for you. I personally keep track of my daily habits and personal goals with a combo Evernote for input and then a Google spreadsheet for long-term tracking.

What this all comes down to is not how or what tool you use, but finding what you are comfortable with and then getting busy with creating lasting habits and accomplishing short- and long-term goals.